Technology and the American Economic Transition: Choices for the Future

This book analyzes the future of the United States in terms of people in their role as consumers and as employees. It uses conventional economic accounting procedures to document economic growth, but also employs more qualitative standards for measuring progress in eight basic categories of demand or amenity: food, housing, transportation, health, clothing and personal care, education, personal communication and business, and recreation and leisure. The first chapter of this 14-chapter report introduces the themes developed in the document and provides a summary and guide to the entire report. Following the introductory chapter, four major sections containing 11 chapters cover different elements of the American economic system: consumption networks, production networks, trade networks, and people in production networks. Each part introduces a set of analytical tools for using national statistical series to look at economy-wide patterns of change. Each of the four parts also contains a discussion of issues unique to each amenity network. These examinations include a review of changes in patterns of consumer and government purchases, changes in the way producers combine to deliver products and services, and changes in the way people with different skills are linked together directly and indirectly in these networks. A fifth and final part contains two chapters dealing with policy and the future. Chapter 13 develops a set of hypotheses about the future structure of the economy built from a series of specific hypotheses concerning consumption, production, trade, and labor. Chapter 14 reviews options for revising the regulations and incentives that shape the direction of United States economic growth. An appendix discusses data and methods. (KC)